I just dont understand why herald of death is any good , i thinhk you can transform everythi9ng in your castle, cant u?

I dont think its a good idea to pick leadership. If you add diplomacy and herald thats 5 lvlups , its not worth to invest so much to have diplomacy skill. Maybe on super large maps it would payed off but in regular games i dont think its worth it.

I think ull be at +1 , betruger explained it on forums some time ago but i dont remember exactly, i think it was +1

Quote:I just dont understand why herald of death is any good , i thinhk you can transform everythi9ng in your castle, cant u?

I dont think its a good idea to pick leadership. If you add diplomacy and herald thats 5 lvlups , its not worth to invest so much to have diplomacy skill. Maybe on super large maps it would payed off but in regular games i dont think its worth it.

I think ull be at +1 , betruger explained it on forums some time ago but i dont remember exactly, i think it was +1

Yes, without diplomacy it is only a time and money saver. Since you need recruitment to get Herald of Death, that's 6 levels used basically just for a better chance of getting neutrals to join and a money-saver.

I must have a long break before attempting to play Necropolis again because it appears that I have lost once again!

I had a hotseat game with my buddy and he went for the dwarves and their nasty Rune of Charge I was the (weak) Necropolis because I was back then sure that this time I'm going to win.

Well in the late game we had this huge fight as we always do, heroes above level 20, many creatures and so on.

The odds were about 1/3 for me I even had few levels higher hero. I focused on vampires and liches because they are the best units of the Necropolis IMO so I had a large stack of them, also I had about 1200 archers.

But damn still those dwarves got the best of me and won. I had the right hero: Vladimir with expert Raise dead and my friend even made two serious mistakes and still managed to win.

So any ideas how I can beat dwarves with Necropolis? Because of the Rune of Charge my liches never got to shoot and they died in first few rounds.

Give up... Necropolis sucks hard only sylvan is weakest... or just change you hero Vladimir sucks as well.

are u sure?
i think necropolis was one of the strongest faction, of course now tote is comming and many things will be changed
btw vladimir is one of the best, only kaspar is better imho

and tips versus dwarves:
wraiths are very usefull here, 1 wraith can kill 1 magma dragon, and we can say, that to kill magma isnt that easy
and dark magic agaist dwarves isnt very useful, the most dangerous creature is mind immune
general with help of phoenix and arcan armor, its not very hard to defeat dwarves
and better get more wraithes, than vampires

I actually tend to agree with this statement. but cannot help but find it interesting that Necropolis, which used to be the ultimate late-game faction, now suddenly has to rush to stand a chance. Not that I disapprove of this change, quite on the contrary.

EDIT > Anyway, in an attempt to add something usefull to this, I should perhaps add that I think the power of Necropolis is that it has fairly easy access to good magic creeping through the following means:

The beauty of point 3 + 4 is that you don't even need to built ultra-high level mage-guild to get started, and it'll take you pretty far. Furthermore, Necromancy will provide you with an, albeit not very fast, then steady supply of new troops (pick them carefully to match your needs). This means that you'll be able to creep quite extensively without using too much money on recruiting creatures in town, which will help you to build fairly quickly - aim for Vampires, Liches and/or Wraiths, forget about Dragons less they change the building cost.
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What will happen now?

With Raise Dead and Mark of the Necromancer they have a big advantage in creeping over the other factions, as they can take most neutrals without losses.
Like sdfx said Naadir is a good choice, if you are okay to take both Summoning and Dark. The only problem is that with two skills it's not as easy to get MotN quickly.

With Rune of Charge the Liches can usually be blocked fast, so I find it better to raise other creatures.
Puppet Master and Frenzy are useful, with puppet you can also spend the enemies runes and use them against the dwarfs. Attacking the magmas with them is usually a good idea, since they are unattractive targets for your own creatures with their shield and a retaliation that has a good blow. Exactly that happens to the enemy then With a little luck you can also block them so they can't reach your own creatures so easily. Yes it can be cleansed, but only if the enemy gets it, and you usually manage to get at least one turn.

Late game then.. Hmmmm
Summoning has haunted mines so it will give you more troops(ghosts).
Dark can puppet and frenzy so it's excellent too. It can be perfect late with staff of sar issus.
Attack -> power of speed(mass haste) is great too
Definitely take Enlightenment for stats
Last skill should be luck but it has only a base 2% chance to show up.

On the other hand, late game may mean that going for the ultimate(howl of terror) is the best thing to do.

Quote:As for which skills to get I follow along with sdfx... summoning, dark, enlightenment, sorcery and I try to go for defense as well. (If you're going to have to absorb damage, you might as well do it better.)

Hope that helps.

Woot, we have the same skillbuildup for necro! Although I'm tempted to try Attack instead of Defense for a change, since the insane increase in skelly damage seems quite interesting, even though their numbers are lower these days.

Quote:Thanks guys for your tips.

But in our games rushing is a bit banned cause we like to have these epic battles in the end, it's just much more exciting that way.

So should I next time get both Summoning- and Dark magic? Or just one of them? I find it hard to choose between slow/blind/frenzy or raise dead when my hero's turn comes.

I had only Summoning magic in that game because Dark magic didn't pop up early, I got attack because more damage to vampires> more life they drain.

Both. Necromancer is a magic-oriented hero, it's safe to go for both Dark and Summoning. Expert summoning effectively doubles the number of creatures you raise (but mind you, I generally don't bother using raise dead untill near the end of the battle, since it reduces HP by 20%, which is a LOT...). I have to admit I usually don't use a lot of summoning, but Phantom forces and / or Phoenix / Elementals is always a good backup when dark Magic isn't usefull. Mass Confusion, Mass Suffering, Frenzy, Blind and PuppetMaster are your best friends. Mass Slow does very well too, and Mass Weakness is best against Inferno.

Use Frenzy before mass suffering / confusion though.

I'm curious, what else would you pick if you'd go for only 1 magic skill? A might necro hero doesn't do very well since its units aren't very potent to begin with. A Necromancer's strength is his magic. Concentrate on that.

Although I'm starting to think about Lucrezia (spelling?) with the vamp special + Attack skill + Battle Frenzy + Cold Steel.... That might actually make quite a solid tier 4.

Yeah Lucretia sounds good too and with attack, yes the Vampires will become a formidably force indeed. But I have heard that she has sorcery as a basic skill and everyone say that's bad, I'm thinking if you are going to take both Summoning and Dark magic? More Frenzy, Raise Dead and blind anyone?

The bad thing would be that now your Vampires are very taunted by your human foes and will absolutely try focus on them hurling implosion and such but with Phantom Force that shouldn't be a problem and it's great to use the PF to them because they can't die to enemy retaliation!

Phantom forces aint invulnerable btw, they have only 50% chance to avoid an enemy blow, and a single blow destroys the entire stack. If the enemy has Destructive magic, Phantom forces is less usefull, since one area spell tends to take them down along with damage to your other units. (Incorperal ability does NOT trigger when targetted by elemental destructive spells.)

I once played hotseat with a friend that had Lucrezia. So we were both lvl 32 or something, I was playing Academy. I had 3 slots miniartifacts on all my creatures . He asctualy didn't go for ANY magic school. All he did was take Magic Insight and learn Phantom Forces...and only used Phantom Forces on his Vampires...They were absoulte killers...they blocked my Titans, Mages, killed all my djins in one blow . He was pure might necro with luck,defence,attack (battle frenzy and the bloody claw so his 4k archers had 3-4 dmg ). So as you might guess I lost but what I'm tring to say is that necros can live without their magic. The problem is that now necro won't raise so much troops anymore due to the new necromancy but this should still work.
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Quote:I once played hotseat with a friend that had Lucrezia. So we were both lvl 32 or something, I was playing Academy. I had 3 slots miniartifacts on all my creatures . He asctualy didn't go for ANY magic school. All he did was take Magic Insight and learn Phantom Forces...and only used Phantom Forces on his Vampires...They were absoulte killers...they blocked my Titans, Mages, killed all my djins in one blow . He was pure might necro with luck,defence,attack (battle frenzy and the bloody claw so his 4k archers had 3-4 dmg ). So as you might guess I lost but what I'm tring to say is that necros can live without their magic. The problem is that now necro won't raise so much troops anymore due to the new necromancy but this should still work.

If you're talking 4K archers you're talking about an old version of Heroes V. Necromancy is nerfed these days, 4K skellies are no more than a myth now. Although I have to say I want to give that strategy a try, and it does sound logical against Academy who does better at magic and blocking a Necromancer's magic.

Yeap this was more than a month before and I didn't have the 2.1 patch on. But the thing is that the real problem for me was those damned Vampire clones that had no retaliation and giving the fact that Lucrezia is a Vampire princess made even the clones ultimate killers . And I was focusing more on Light Magic with Mass Deflect Missle and Mass Endurance so I couldn't have wasted a turn to kill those clones with a spell or something.
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Quote:But I have heard that she has sorcery as a basic skill and everyone say that's bad

You have heard? Don't tell me you haven't got the manual____________But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it.

Phantom forces aint invulnerable btw, they have only 50% chance to avoid an enemy blow, and a single blow destroys the entire stack. If the enemy has Destructive magic, Phantom forces is less usefull, since one area spell tends to take them down along with damage to your other units. (Incorperal ability does NOT trigger when targetted by elemental destructive spells.)

What I meant was that Vampires have no enemy retalition so it's safe to go and hit almost anything without a fear. Just don't try to hit Fire or Magma Dragons as I did totally forgot that they have that Fire Shield ability.

Anyway I'm going to give Lucretia a try in my next game, better to win this time.

I think that I pick Dark Magic, Summoning Magic, Attack and Sorcery I already have. So which would be the best skill to fill up my last slot?